Reading through the numerous posts and comments on corporations as people, particularly with respect to free speech and the Citizens United case, I've been frustrated with the lack of clarity and thoughtfulness on this issue. Here is my attempt to explain my thinking on these issues. This is going to be long; there is no TL;DR substitute.
Here are some common arguments I see being made in support of Citizens United: "Corporations are just groups of people, so restricting their speech is restricting people's free speech". "This isn't about corporate personhood, it's about free speech!" On the other side, often the arguments revolve entirely about how corporations aren't people, which is technically correct but isn't really getting at the issue.
To start with the blatantly obvious: Corporations are not people. Period. This shouldn't even need debating. Anyone who has progressed beyond Abstractions 101 should agree with this.
What are corporations? They are groups of people endowed with certain legal characteristics to facilitate economic activity. This is the most important part: "economic activity".
According to Wikipedia, common characteristics of corporations include "Legal personality, Limited liability,Transferable shares (ownership), Centralized management under a board structure". One should recognize that many of the economic rights of an individual are also available to corporations (such as legal personality, property ownership, the ability to enter into contracts, etc.) because we want to facilitate the ability of corporations (groups of people) to participate in economic activity. This is what corporate personhood means: not that they pump blood through veins, but that we give them rights that are originally thought of as individual rights to facilitate group activity.
But, and this is probably the most important sentence: Corporations should not have the political rights of the Individual simply because they have the economic rights of the Individual.
Society and government CAN and SHOULD give different groups of people, made for different purposes, different sets of individual rights tailored for said purposes. A group of people should not have ALL the rights of individuals - it depends on the PURPOSE of the group.
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